What makes for a bad class?

Earlier, I said something about how my morning developmental writing class was my Worst Group Ever. I got to thinking about why that was--yes, I had two obnoxious students, but what was it about the others that made them so unsatisfying to teach? First off, it was a very small class--it's hard to sustain any kind of momentum with a very small group. (I started with six, ended with three.) I had the two obnoxious ones (Guy Who Swears A Lot and Man-Vagina), and two who had personal problems/crises that prevented them from attending consistently or putting in much effort. I'm pretty sympathetic to that--BCCC students generally have very chaotic lives, and sometimes school ends up last on a very long list of priorities. But being sympathetic doesn't mean that such students are a pleasure to teach. First of all, I can't teach them if they aren't there; secondly, even if they do try to keep up, often they don't make enough progress that I can honestly pass them on into regular freshman English. It's frustrating for me to have to fail students who are doing the best they can in a bad situation, and of course it's even more frustrating for them.

And the last two? They're the most difficult to evaluate. They were clearly just there to get a passing grade. Unlike Guy Who Put in What he Thought was the Minimum Effort to Pass, but was Horribly Wrong (who was in the evening class), these two had a realistic idea of what they had to do in order to get through the class with a satisfactory grade, and they did it without (much) fuss. I can't really complain about them; they didn't do anything in particular to wear on my nerves, and, unlike the students who had personal crises, I didn't have to spend any time or mental energy worrying about them. But I'm also pretty convinced that they got no lasting benefit from my class--they learned just enough to pass, but they probably could have passed the placement test and avoided my class entirely if they'd had a couple of tutoring sessions beforehand. Now, I do tell my students, and I really do believe, that even students who are on the upper end of the ability/preparedness spectrum for developmental English, can get a lot of benefit out of my class if they put in effort. No one, and especially no community college student, is such a terrific writer that they can't improve with a practice and (to a lesser extent) instruction. But a student who is on the upper end of ability, and is focused just on getting a passing grade? Is just wasting their time and money taking my class.

So, in short, I don't think anyone got much of anything out of my morning remedial English class, except me: I got paid, which is always nice. (I do like sleeping indoors.) But it's hard to maintain much enthusiasm for remedial English when I'm the only one in the room who's making any kind of effort, or who cares if anybody learns anything or not.

PS: I did think of something that one student, maybe, got out of it. When we read a piece by Dave Barry (it's in the textbook), Guy Who Swears A Lot really liked it and asked where he could read more by the same author. Since he self-identifies as a person who doesn't read unless he has to, I suppose putting something in front of him that made him at least imagine that he might want to do more reading for pleasure is an accomplishment. But a very small one.